Thursday, April 16, 2009

Two utterly and completely unrelated thoughts:

On the pin-up girl issue: I really don't mind that I might be yoked, in some designer's mind, to the pin-up girls of old. I don't know a WHOLE lot about them, but from what I know, it seems like they had sass and a sense of humor about what they were doing and I can appreciate that. It was like, what they were doing wasn't (generally) really dirty, it was maybe at times a bit racy or bawdy - but somehow, raciness or bawdiness can be funny and a celebration of life, but the real down-and-dirty dirtiness that is in some realms of pop culture today is just kind of tawdry and defeated.

I'm not saying that at all well...but maybe you get what I mean. I remember reading (this may be an apocryphal story) that Betty Grable or someone, while having a cheesecake picture taken, made the comment, "Let's remind the boys what they're fighting for!" (Or maybe that was from some old movie I saw). Almost a sense of being not-exactly-sexy-but-I-can't-think-of-a-better-word as a civic duty or out of a sense of patriotism...

(and yeah, yeah, I know, some of you are muttering "heteronormative" and other things under your breath, but this is my imagined reality we're talking about here)

I may not look like the traditional pin-up girl (then again, I don't know; what was considered "hot" in the 1940s was a little bit more generously proportioned than what's considered "hot" today.)

(And I will say, as yet another aside - I put on a dress this morning I had not worn in some six months. Back then it fit, but tightly. Now it fits comfortably - it's not LOOSE but neither is it as tight as it was. And since it's linen, I doubt it stretched out any hanging in the closet. And I do think my legs are taking on a more pleasing form, thanks to the large quantities of exercise I do currently)

And the other, unrelated thought:

Another sampler-motto, that I like even better than the Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka quotation, comes from Jane Austen:

"Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort."

Because I tend to believe that. And I don't get to be home nearly as much as what I'd find ideally comfortable these days.

I should get a little notebook and write these mottoes down, for someday when I may have time to stitch them all up.

1 comment:

Lydia said...

A commonplace book! Have you ever read those? I had to for a history class, and they were a lot like a blog of an earlier era.